Etsuko Ichihara(1936-2019)

Etsuko Ichihara died in the early hours of 13.01.2019 at age 82 in Tokyo, Japan due to heart failure. She had outlived her husband and had no children. She had been ill and hospitalized, but discharged on the 30th of December allowing her to spend New Year's at home. She returned to another hospital on the fifth of January complaining of pain. She was able to speak until the seventh on which day her speech and consciousness began to slip. Previous to that she had been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease in 2016 and hospitalized. She was born in Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture, which is next door to Tokyo on 24.01.1936. She attended Tokyo's Waseda University and studied literature. She would enter the entertainment industry in 1957 and had over one hundred credits to her name by the time of her demise. Ichihara joined the Tokyo-based Haiyuza theatre troupe - from which she only resigned in 1971 - and made her debut in Yukiguni in 1957. Her voice was heard in the well-known comic book-based animated serial Manga Nihon Mukashi Banashi beginning in the 1970s. Over the years, she became a household name for her appearance in successive Kaseifu Wa Mita ('The Housemaid Witnessed It') series. She appeared in the bleak Black Rain in 1989 whose story revolved around the American war crime of bombing the civilians of Hiroshima. She won the Japan Academy Prize for Best Supporting Actress for this role. Her biggest film, however, was the pan-Asian hit Kimi No Na Wa to which she lent her voice in 2016. Her final film was the endearing and redemptive Shabondama. Her husband, director Shiomi, was also in the entertainment business and had died of pneumonia.